Your School District Is Trying To Take Away Your Chances at a Free And Appropriate Education

They are at it again. Your school district is using your hard earned money to mislead the voters of this district. They want you to help them destroy a bill that would help our children. We need to wake up and start holding Dr. McGehee and our hand picked School Board accountable.

I will give you information on why this bill needs to be passed and below it I will copy what the district is sending out to the voters of this district. It is misleading and hurtful to parents and families that have been fighting this district for years.

I know of families that have spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to get the services that their children are federally entitled to. The district uses your tax dollars to make sure that these families never win. Is that what you want from your school district? Stand up and so no. Encourage your legislators to vote yes. I will contacting them to let them know of the actions of this district.

Please
make a point to contact your Senator to promote SB 365, let them know about
specific situations you are aware of where parents are retaliated against,
intimidated and their child is not provided the accommodations that the law
requires. That is why this Bill is SO Important. This infuriates me
that they can use our money in such an overt way. I think our legislators
need to put a stop to this too. We have no public forum that reaches so
many patrons especially since our local papers and our local city officials
won't touch the subject. I will keep trying to expose all of this.
Please post to social media with your own concerns about what they are
sending out. In a way this is an act of desperation on their part.

This
should not be taken lightly. This Bill is our hope to level the field for
Special Education Students.

The Missouri Senate
may soon vote on SB 365 (Schmitt), a bill that makes
significant and harmful changes to special education law in Missouri. Among
other things the bill is inconsistent and even contradictory to federal law on
special education including IDEA. The bill shifts the burden of proving compliance
with special education procedures to school districts. The bill allows parents
of students with special needs to assert an individualized education
program (IEP) is defective with little or no evidence and requires the school
district to disprove the allegations.

The bill will discourage the use of mediation in the event of a dispute,
meaning more due process and higher costs for both parents and school
districts. The bill also allows parents to have an attorney at an evaluation or
IEP meeting, but prevents the school district from having an attorney present.
This is patently unfair and violates basic concepts of due process.

While it would be very difficult to estimate the cost of this bill accurately,
it seems safe to assume that Missouri schools will need to significantly
increase their budget for special education to pay for thousands of additional
evaluations each year along with extensive expansion of services requested by
parents that schools are unable to deny under these new procedures. Given
the unclear wording of the bill, it is even unclear if attorneys could
represent schools during any due process procedure, which denies a
district from having equal representation where there is disagreement.

Senate Bill 365 is an ill-conceived and poorly drafted bill that has
no benefit for special education students or school districts. Please consider contacting
your state senator and urging a "no" vote on SB 365.

Senators and representatives who serve our
school district follow and are also available at our website.

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